Betty Gravlin, author of free e-books at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.com.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Granite City Abortion Clinic Part Of Rape InvestigationPolice in Arkansas say a Granite City abortion clinic is part of a rape investigation involving a juvenile. Jeffery Cheshier, 41, is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl. Officers say he then forced the victim to have an abortion in Granite City.Police in Bryant, Ark., say Cheshier began assaulting the juvenile last year. In October, he was arrested and charged with rape. The victim told police Cheshier had gotten her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion.According to records obtained by Bryant police, the abortion was performed at the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City. Angela Michael frequently protests outside the clinic and police used a photo she took of Cheshier's car to prove he was there in March.In Illinois, juveniles do not need parental consent for an abortion. When we asked the Madison County State's Attorney's Office if clinics are required to notify police when a juvenile has an abortion, we were referred to the Hope Clinic who told us such notification is not mandatory.

Frozen embryos have no right to life: Irish courtDUBLIN (Reuters) - A woman lost her fight to have a child without the consent of her estranged husband on Wednesday when an Irish judge ruled frozen embryos did not enjoy the same constitutional right to life as those carried in the womb.Justice Brian McGovern said most agreed frozen embryos resulting from infertility treatment deserved special respect but ruled "the right to life of the unborn" in the Irish constitution did not extend to them."I have come to the conclusion that the three frozen embryos are not 'unborn'," the judge said in a landmark High Court ruling complicated by the fact that existing legislation does not define "unborn"."There has been no evidence ... to establish that it was ever in the mind of the people voting on the Eight Amendment to the Constitution that 'unborn' meant anything other than a fetus or child within the womb," McGovern added.The judgment means spare embryos frozen after successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2002 will not be returned to the mother.http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-11-15T174650Z_01_L15783683_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRELAND-EMBRYOS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Adult Stem cells help dogs with dystrophyMissouri voters should have read this article before they voted Nov 7.In promising new research, stem cells worked remarkably well at easing symptoms of muscular dystrophy in dogs, an experiment that experts call a significant step toward treating people. "It's a great breakthrough for all of us working on stem cells for muscular dystrophy," said researcher Johnny Huard of the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the work.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061116/ap_on_he_me/stem_cells_dystrophy

DNA from Neanderthal leg shows distant splitWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have sequenced DNA from the leg bone of a Neanderthal man who died 38,000 years ago and said on Wednesday it shows the Neanderthals are truly distant relatives of modern humans who interbred rarely, if at all, with our own immediate ancestors.They estimate that modern humans and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor at least 370,000 years ago, and possibly 500,000 years ago, although we share 99.95 percent of our DNA."We see no evidence of mixing 40,000, 30,000 years ago in Europe. We don't exclude it, but see no evidence," Edward Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, who led one study, told reporters.This conflicts with some evidence from other researchers, including a team who said earlier this month that humans may have inherited a brain gene from Neanderthals.http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-11-15T193028Z_01_N15369621_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-NEANDERTHAL.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Science+NewsNews-3

Woman Wins Religious Discrimination CaseSAVANNAH, Mo. (AP) -- Three years after she was fired for refusing to work on Sundays, Connie Rehm has won back her job on the staff of this small town's public library, and her employers have received a costly education in employment rights law.A federal jury found in her favor after a three-day trial in May, and last month she was reinstated on a judge's order to the staff assistant job she had held for 12 years before her religious practice and the library's adoption of Sunday hours collided in 2003.http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NOT_ON_SUNDAY?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US